"The longtime prayers of Holy Family Parish on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation will be answered in October when Kateri Tekakwitha becomes the first Native American saint in the history of the Catholic Church throughout the world.

Almost all of the more than 60 families in Holy Family Parish are Native Americans, and they have been praying regularly for the canonization of Tekakwitha, whose father was a Mohawk tribal chief and whose mother was a Catholic Algonquin.

Sometimes referred to as Blessed Kateri, she is said to have lived a life of prayer and penitential practices, teaching the young, helping the poor and sick, speaking words of kindness, and fashioning crosses out of sticks and placing them in the forest. "

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Religion News: Prayers to be answered with canonization of first Native American saint (The Buffalo News 4/8)

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